Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Hiking Black Diamond in a Storm

You may recall that my last trip out to the Black Diamond Regional Preserve area was on a very foggy afternoon upon which I was able to get some really cool pictures of the foggy old ghost town of Somersville and some shots of the Rose Hill Cemetery trail in the fog as well...

Yesterday afternoons weather was even more extreme than that as the wind howled through the canyons bending the trees atop of the steep grades that rise almost straight up in many parts of the trails...

My wife and I were out on the trails of the Hazel Atlas Mine and the Greathouse Visitor Center and up to the Eureka Slope Mine also... Visibility on the trail was surprisingly clear considering what a blustery day it was...

On my last visit the visibility was very low and there were no vistas at all other than a foggy recollection of the sites you would usually see ... Yesterday however I was able to get some great far off shots of the Rose hill cemetery from all over the trail going off trail as well into a moss covered canyon crevasse that looked and felt like we had just entered a scene from a Jurrassic Park movie...

Truly an awsome place to hit the trails and see the unique Mountainous Hills and Valleys of this Mt.Diablo foothills region... If you enjoy hiking in the Diablo foothills and have never been out to the Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve then you have been missing some of the best of the best foothills trails in the bay to hike around in... Full of historic facts, old mines and famous sites to see...

Infact with out Wildlife corridors like the Black Diamond Foothills the Mt. Diablo Mountain Lion would not be able to survive...On my last visit I did speak to a local hiker from Antioch who told me that he had an encounter with a Cougar on the Chaparral loop trail last year and that he stood tall and spoke loudly to the cat who had the high ground across the ravine and eventually disappeared into the chaparral... There are warning signs at the trail head alerting hikers to the presence of Mountain Lions though I have not seen one yet myself, I know they have seen me ... Although yesterday while hiking well off trail in this very Jurassic looking moss covered ravine my wife did get a bit nervous on me and since she has been correct in the past with her funny feelings of wild animals being around us I decided to listen to her and we went back onto the trail and up to the Eureka Slope Mine...

Even in a storm this place and its many stories of historical fact and also legend is a really cool place to spend a few hours getting away from it all and just hike around in some really cool historical countryside ....